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Copywork
About This Passage
This passage anchors the lesson because Jake announces his distrust, invents comic alternatives for Cohn's nose, and then verifies the boxing title through Spider Kelly rather than Cohn himself. Copying it helps the student trace Hemingway's movement from declared skepticism to indirect proof — the structure that governs the whole novel.
I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in your own words, focusing on how the narrator presents Robert Cohn: how antisemitic treatment at Princeton drove Cohn to boxing; why a verified boxing championship still left him shy and under Frances's control; and how the narrator's declared distrust of frank and simple people shapes the portrait we receive.
Discussion Questions
- The chapter tells us Cohn learned boxing 'to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton,' and yet 'he never fought except in the gym,' and the chapter's final words still call him 'very shy' — why might that gap between what boxing was meant to fix and what it actually changed matter for how we understand who Cohn has and has not become?
- Jake opens this chapter by declaring 'I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together' before he gives us his portrait of Cohn — why might that open admission of distrust make him either more reliable as a narrator, because he names his bias before using it, or less reliable, because he has already warned us the portrait passes through a filter, and which reading does the chapter's own evidence support more strongly?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
To work against a force, feeling, or effect in order to reduce or cancel it.
Item 2
The condition of feeling less capable, worthy, or important than others.
Item 3
An uncomfortable awareness of oneself, especially of how one appears or is judged by others.
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Critical Thinking
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